Field Trip PodcastField Trip Podcast | Field Trip Podcasthttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com
Science without the lab, radio without the airwavesWed, 18 Sep 2013 18:41:20 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2Science without the lab, radio without the airwavesField Trip PodcastnoScience without the lab, radio without the airwavesField Trip PodcastField Trip Podcast | Field Trip Podcasthttp://fieldtrippodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/fieldtrippodcast-icon.pnghttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com
What we did on our summer vacationshttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2013/09/18/what-we-did-on-our-summer-vacations/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2013/09/18/what-we-did-on-our-summer-vacations/#commentsWed, 18 Sep 2013 18:41:20 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=1177Hi Field Trip friends!

Wondering why there haven’t been any new podcasts up in a while? That’s because we’ve been tied up with some exciting new projects that have kept us out of the studio. Here’s what’s been in the works behind the scenes:

Eric wrote another book! It’s called The Secret Lives of Sports Fans, and it’s a thrilling psychological investigation into the curious inner workings of sports fans. He’s also the brand new editorial director at Bay Nature magazine, so keep an eye open for his first issue this winter.

Kara is taking the year off from teaching to work on her first book project. The topic is currently Top Secret … but, yes, it’s totally about weird science.

This week, correspondent Teresa Chin takes us on a tour beneath the Monterey Bay to explore the sights and creatures of the deep. Cruise a shipwreck, learn how to pilot an underwater research vessel and hear more than you ever wanted to know about jellyfish sex. This episode is rated PGI: Parental Guidance recommended for Invertebrates.

That’s all for this season, folks! We’ll be back in early 2013 with new episodes for Series 4. Got an idea for a field trip you think we should take? Want us to come visit YOU? Drop us a line at: info [at] fieldtrippodcast [dot] com.

See you soon!

About this week’s special Field Trip Correspondent:

Teresa Chin is a science producer at Youth Radio in Oakland. Her past jobs have included high school chemistry teacher, intern zookeeper, and plucky health reporter. She loves learning, and has two masters degrees from Berkeley to prove it. You can follow her on Twitter @TeresaLChin.

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/11/05/summer-dispatches-teresa-on-swimming-with-submersibles/feed/0This week, correspondent Teresa Chin takes us on a tour beneath the Monterey Bay to explore the sights and creatures of the deep. Cruise a shipwreck, learn how to pilot an underwater research vessel and hear more than you ever wanted to know about jell...This week, correspondent Teresa Chin takes us on a tour beneath the Monterey Bay to explore the sights and creatures of the deep. Cruise a shipwreck, learn how to pilot an underwater research vessel and hear more than you ever wanted to know about jellyfish sex. This episode is rated PGI: Parental Guidance recommended for Invertebrates.Field Trip PodcastnoSummer Dispatches: Lo on marine mammal rescuehttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/29/summer-dispatches-lo-on-marine-mammal-rescue/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/29/summer-dispatches-lo-on-marine-mammal-rescue/#commentsMon, 29 Oct 2012 07:05:54 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=1001

This week, Field Trip Correspondent Lo Benichou take us behind the scenes at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, where wounded seals, sea lions and sea elephants are nursed back to health with the help of dedicated surgeons, volunteers and medicine tablets hidden inside of fish guts. Tune in for a surprising look at what’s threatening the Pacific Coast’s sea mammals (hint: it’s not just sharks) plus a very special debate in which we pit the very idea of nature being red in tooth and claw (Eric) against the entire concept of medicine (Kara) and the fact that sea lions are just plain cute. It’s the Field Trip battle we always knew was coming: fish vs. pinniped!

About this week’s special Field Trip Correspondent:

Lauren (Lo) Benichou is a young and ambitious reporter. She fell in love with sounds and storytelling when interning with NPR in DC. She is currently working part-time at KQED and interning with The Kitchen Sisters.

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/29/summer-dispatches-lo-on-marine-mammal-rescue/feed/1This week, Field Trip Correspondent Lo Benichou take us behind the scenes at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, where wounded seals, sea lions and sea elephants are nursed back to health with the help of dedicated surgeons,This week, Field Trip Correspondent Lo Benichou take us behind the scenes at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, where wounded seals, sea lions and sea elephants are nursed back to health with the help of dedicated surgeons, volunteers and medicine tablets hidden inside of fish guts. Tune in for a surprising look at what's threatening the Pacific Coast's sea mammals (hint: it's not just sharks) plus a very special debate in which we pit the very idea of nature being red in tooth and claw (Eric) against the entire concept of medicine (Kara) and the fact that sea lions are just plain cute. It's the Field Trip battle we always knew was coming: fish vs. pinniped!Field Trip PodcastnoSummer Dispatches: Becky on human-powered ferris wheelshttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/22/summer-dispatches-becky-on-human-powered-ferris-wheels/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/22/summer-dispatches-becky-on-human-powered-ferris-wheels/#commentsMon, 22 Oct 2012 07:05:40 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=997

This week Field Trip Correspondent Becky Palmstrom takes us to a festival in Taung Byone, Myanmar, where we learn how to run a ferris wheel … using people power. That’s right, if you haven’t got any electricity, and you MUST run a classic carnival attraction, you’ve got to hire a bunch of guys to launch themselves at it and spin the wheel using a process that can only be described as … terrifying.

Throw everything you know about physics and biomechanics out the window, and come with us and Becky on our most wild ride yet!

About this week’s special Field Trip Correspondent:

Becky Palmstrom is a freelance radio and print journalist based in Burma (Myanmar). Her radio work has appeared on National Public Radio (NPR), Deutsche Welle Radio and KALW. Her reporting focuses on humanitarian and development issues.

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/22/summer-dispatches-becky-on-human-powered-ferris-wheels/feed/0This week Field Trip Correspondent Becky Palmstrom takes us to a festival in Taung Byone, Myanmar, where we learn how to run a ferris wheel ... using people power. That's right, if you haven't got any electricity,This week Field Trip Correspondent Becky Palmstrom takes us to a festival in Taung Byone, Myanmar, where we learn how to run a ferris wheel ... using people power. That's right, if you haven't got any electricity, and you MUST run a classic carnival attraction, you've got to hire a bunch of guys to launch themselves at it and spin the wheel using a process that can only be described as ... terrifying.Field Trip PodcastnoSummer Dispatches: Laura on beach rockshttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/15/summer-dispatches-laura-on-beach-rocks/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/15/summer-dispatches-laura-on-beach-rocks/#commentsMon, 15 Oct 2012 07:07:38 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=992

This week we go to to the beach with Field Trip Correspondent Laura Hautala and her Science Mom. Yes, we said Science Mom. And don’t worry, it’s not in the least bit relaxing, as we learn about why the otherwise lovely gigantic basalt structures at Ecola State Park in Oregon are actually the result of millions of years of violent geologic history and the scene of a daily Darwinian struggle played out at the speed of … well, starfish.

So gather your loved ones, slather on some sunscreen, and let’s go see what’s lurking on those mysterious rocks out beyond the shore.

(P.S. Stay tuned later this week for a photo field trip courtesy of Science Mom and Science Daughter.)

About this week’s special Field Trip Correspondent:

Laura Hautala is a business reporter in Oakland, CA. She has learned to find science talks a relaxing part of all her vacations.

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/15/summer-dispatches-laura-on-beach-rocks/feed/0This week we go to to the beach with Field Trip Correspondent Laura Hautala and her Science Mom. Yes, we said Science Mom. And don't worry, it's not in the least bit relaxing, as we learn about why the otherwise lovely gigantic basalt structures at Eco...This week we go to to the beach with Field Trip Correspondent Laura Hautala and her Science Mom. Yes, we said Science Mom. And don't worry, it's not in the least bit relaxing, as we learn about why the otherwise lovely gigantic basalt structures at Ecola State Park in Oregon are actually the result of millions of years of violent geologic history and the scene of a daily Darwinian struggle played out at the speed of ... well, starfish.Field Trip PodcastnoSummer Dispatches: Nicole on wetlandshttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/08/summer-dispatches-nicole-on-wetlands/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/08/summer-dispatches-nicole-on-wetlands/#commentsMon, 08 Oct 2012 07:05:58 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=986

We’re back with another installment of our “Summer Dispatches” series, this time starring Field Trip Correspondent Nicole Jones as she figures out how one plant in Arcata, California, is cleaning human wastewater … using a swamp. That’s right, you can clean the grossest thing you can imagine with the second-grossest thing you can imagine.

Join her as she travels from toilet flush to treatment center to duck-covered pond, and learn about how wetlands work as nature’s water filtering system.

We’ll be back every Monday through early November with a new report from somewhere else on the planet. So stay tuned!

About this week’s special Field Trip Correspondent:

Nicole Jones is a multimedia journalist specializing in criminal justice and cat wrangling.

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/08/summer-dispatches-nicole-on-wetlands/feed/0We're back with another installment of our "Summer Dispatches" series, this time starring Field Trip Correspondent Nicole Jones as she figures out how one plant in Arcata, California is cleaning human wastewater ... using a swamp. That's right,We're back with another installment of our "Summer Dispatches" series, this time starring Field Trip Correspondent Nicole Jones as she figures out how one plant in Arcata, California is cleaning human wastewater ... using a swamp. That's right, you can clean the grossest thing you can imagine with the second-grossest thing you can imagine.Field Trip PodcastnoSummer Dispatches: Megan on wildfireshttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/01/summer-dispatches-megan-on-wildfires/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/01/summer-dispatches-megan-on-wildfires/#commentsMon, 01 Oct 2012 07:05:59 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=973

… And we’re back! Welcome to Series 3 of the Field Trip Podcast. This time we’re trying something a little different – we’re bringing in our friends as Field Trip Correspondents. They’ll be sharing their science reporting adventures from all over the globe.

As some of you know, Eric and Kara are instructors at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, which means we work with some really fantastic up-and-coming radio reporters who blow like dandelion seeds all over the world as soon as the final school bell rings in May. And as some others of you know, this summer Eric was simultaneously becoming a dad AND writing a book (more news about that in early 2013, but here’s a hint: It is awesome and it is about BRAINS.) With Eric’s sleep deprivation levels teetering into the danger zone, it seemed like the perfect time to pass the mic to some of our friends, who have been eager to share their own summertime field trips with you. Sort of like a “postcards from summer camp” thing, we figured, but without the bug spray and the macaroni art. And as it turned out, getting to work with a bigger team made for the most fun season so far!

So without further ado, we present the first episode in our “Summer Dispatches” series, in which reporter Megan Molteni braves the scarred landscape of Colorado Springs after this summer’s massive wildfires to learn about how the aftermath of a single fire can change the ecology of a region indefinitely.

We’ll be back every Monday through early November with a new report from somewhere else on the planet. So stay tuned!

About this week’s special Field Trip Correspondent:

Megan Molteni is a multimedia journalist currently earning her Master’s degree from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. A radio junkie with a serious geek tooth for all things biological, she spends most of her free time wandering around the woods, climbing aboard fishing boats or hanging out in a laboratory, usually with microphone in hand.

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/10/01/summer-dispatches-megan-on-wildfires/feed/0... And we're back! Welcome to Series 3 of the Field Trip Podcast, and this time we're trying something different -- we're bringing in our friends as Field Trip Correspondents. They'll be sharing their science reporting adventures from all over the gl...... And we're back! Welcome to Series 3 of the Field Trip Podcast, and this time we're trying something different -- we're bringing in our friends as Field Trip Correspondents. They'll be sharing their science reporting adventures from all over the globe.Field Trip PodcastnoKeep it tuned: Series 3 starts on October 1http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/09/21/keep-it-tuned-series-3-starts-on-october-1/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/09/21/keep-it-tuned-series-3-starts-on-october-1/#commentsFri, 21 Sep 2012 18:49:21 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=966Hi Field Trip friends!

So much has happened since we last saw you all in June! We’ve got some exciting announcements, some very special guests and an all-new series on the way starting October 1. We promise that this season will be weirder and grosser and more full of derring-do than ever.

Stay in touch with us on Twitter and on Facebook for more updates about the coming episodes. As always, they’ll be posted here for free, and you can subscribe (also for free!) on iTunes.

In the meantime, get your headphones shined up and put a gold star on the calendar for October 1. See you soon!

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/09/21/keep-it-tuned-series-3-starts-on-october-1/feed/2Out in the garage and into the DeLorean — the inventor field trip in photoshttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/06/12/out-in-the-garage-and-into-the-delorean-the-inventor-field-trip-in-photos/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/06/12/out-in-the-garage-and-into-the-delorean-the-inventor-field-trip-in-photos/#commentsTue, 12 Jun 2012 22:32:25 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=939A few weeks back, we did a show on garage inventors and DIY culture, and that meant spending the first half of the show hanging out in the backyard shop of inventor Ben Krasnow, a man whose list of garage creations includes homemade Pop Rocks, an ice cream freeze drier, a keyboard that can be played inside of an MRI machine and what we think is the first ever home-built scanning electron microscope. (You can hear the podcast here.)

Want to know what all of that stuff looked like? Well, come along for the ride! First of all, meet Ben Krasnow. Here’s the inventor in his natural environment, a classic DeLorean.

Just kidding. That’s a real DeLorean, but all know that the natural environment of the inventor is here…

… in the garage. This is Ben working at his lab bench on a project that involves putting an LED into a contact lens.

And here’s the rest of that garage, 850 square feet, nearly as big as his house next door. You’re looking straight through from the door to the back of the shop, where there’s an array of cutting and sanding devices. To the left, you can just see the welding and table saw set ups. Near the front right, what looks like an ordinary desk lamp is actually the top of a partially-dismantled homemade freeze dried ice cream rig. (It wasn’t operational when we saw it, so we don’t have any pictures of it in action.) And in the lower left, that’s the scanning electron microscope.

Here’s a larger shot of the scanning electron microscope in all of its B movie glory:

And a close up of the bell jar on top:

The rest of the garage was an eclectic mix of projects in various stages of completion and neatly arranged tools and supplies. For example, Ben has the only at-home ceiling-mounted packing peanut dispenser we have ever seen. (Sorry, not pictured, I was too awestruck.) Need a vise or two?

Or some hardware?

Now one of the parts of the tour that didn’t make it into the show (for timing reasons — we needed to leave some room for the most excellent interview with Jack Hitt!) was walk we took through the interior of Ben’s actual house, which, of course, he’d hacked to make into the perfect inventor’s hangout.

Like, for example, what if you want a nice cold drink while you are watching TV, but don’t want to have to get up to go to the kitchen? Then you would enjoy this refrigerated end table! Take the lamp off, flip up the top, and grab a cool drink from the interior.

Or what if you’re having some friends over for dinner and don’t want to have to leave the table to serve everyone another round of beers? No problem, use the beer tap installed in the dining room wall!

And is it hard to feed the cat while you’re out of town? Then just invent an automatic cat feeder! (Partially pictured: cat. Not pictured: Hidden channel cut into wall that allows cat to access a litterbox inside a closet, thereby keeping litterbox smell out of the rest of the house.)

Now we know what you’re wondering: did Ben invent a flux capacitor for his DeLorean? Well, yes! Or, at least, it had this where the flux capacitor should be:

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/06/12/out-in-the-garage-and-into-the-delorean-the-inventor-field-trip-in-photos/feed/2Into the meat freezer and up a deer’s nose: The taxidermy field trip in photoshttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/06/06/into-the-meat-freezer-and-up-a-deers-nose-the-taxidermy-field-trip-in-photos/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/06/06/into-the-meat-freezer-and-up-a-deers-nose-the-taxidermy-field-trip-in-photos/#commentsWed, 06 Jun 2012 20:11:25 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=909If you’ve listened to our podcast on taxidermy, you’ve heard us make various “Whoa!” noises as we toured the San Francisco workshop of Leah Wade, who runs the Quiet Science Taxidermy Studio. If you want to see what that was all about, join us here on a photo recap of the field trip, with some outtakes from the interview that didn’t fit into the original podcast.

Warning to sensitive viewers: This is the kind of photo essay that begins with a photo of a meat freezer. If that seems likely to put you off your lunch, we’d suggest you instead try our most vegetarian option, our photo tour of a pickle factory.

OK, on to …

… the meat freezer. This is where the animals that have been sent to Leah for preservation are kept. Pictured here: ermines and rabbits, mostly. These are all animals that still have their fur, but you can see, maybe, why Kara thought they looked like “a bag of bacon.”

Also note the It’s-It and the bottle of Jameson. ”That’s for when the work is done,” Leah says.

The next part of the process involves skinning the animal and preserving the skin and fur. ”I skin it, and then salt it to remove all of the oils and fats,” Leah says. “Then it gets put into a bath for rehydration with a bactericide to kill any odors, bacteria, whatever. Then a relaxer to soften the skin. Then it gets pickled in acid for three days and that changes the PH of the skin; it kills any bacteria; it allows the tanning agents to be penetrated into the skin. The next step is tanning.”

We don’t have any photos of this process because Leah didn’t have it underway on the day we visited, but she did have some examples of what a skinned, tanned animal looks like when this is completed. Behold, taxidermist with coyote:

This is probably the most romantic photo ever taken of the taxidermy process.

Once the skin is prepared, it’s time to fit it to a form. Leah points out that the forms are mass produced, and the number of options for poses is determined by the animal’s popularity among taxidermists.

“The most popular mount to make is a deer, so there are like a thousand deer mounts that you can get,” she says. “Pine martens, there are like four. So you can choose one that is hanging dead, like it was going to be caught by something larger, or you can choose one that is standing looking majestically, you can choose one that is running or sitting.

Kara wants to know: “Do they have names for the pose, like ‘Pine Marten in Repose?’”

Here’s part of Leah’s box of tools, which she uses once it’s time to start preparing the mount. The stout ruffer, that thing in the upper left corner that looks like a really painful currycomb, is what she uses to scratch up the form, making the surface uneven enough that hide paste will stick it it, allowing the skin to attach.

Speaking of hide paste, here’s a shelf of taxidermy supplies. The Q-tips are used for cleaning glass eyes to make them look bright. ”That’s the number one thing — if an eye is dirty then the thing looks dead,” Leah says. “If an eye is clean and really accurate than it really brings it to life. So I’m really obsessive about cleaning eyes.”

Leah points out that she doesn’t use formaldehyde or any other kind of mortuary chemicals. “Most people don’t realize that you’re not really using any dangerous chemicals except for the pickling acid and none of it is a controlled substance. I just use standard cleaners and most of it is non-toxic,” she says.

Not pictured: the taxidermist’s outfit.

“I can tell you I look great when I am doing taxidermy,” Leah says. “I have got a nerdy head lamp that I position. I have got this black latex apron. I look like City of Lost Children. I also have these elbow-length black latex gloves for when I’m working with acid, so I really look like a nightmare. I’ve answered the door like that before and people are like, ‘Uh, wrong door. I gotta go.’”

A few options for mounting the finished work. Once the form is ready, Leah will stitch the skin onto the form using a baseball stitch, and then position and groom it until it looks life-like.

And now it’s time to see the results! Here’s Leah with one of her ducks.

And a pheasant:

And this is … a raccoon. A very very very large raccoon. Leah put a lot of work into sculpting its snarl, creating a pebbly nosepad (each bump is hand-crafted with glue and a tiny brush), and making the interior of the mouth look real and the nose look wet …

… but the rugger Leah sent this one to for matting had some other artistic ideas. “My raccoon has ruffles all over it that I didn’t ask for. That one was a real heartbreaker,” Leah says. “It looks like it’s wearing a poet shirt.”

“It’s really a boys’ game, taxidermy, so I think they saw my name, a female name, they were like, ‘She’ll love it, put some bows on it,’” she says.

Next up: the deer. ”Every taxidermied deer I’ve ever seen has this smug smile. Is there any way of getting rid of that or is that just the constitution of deer?” Eric wants to know.

“A lot of it is in the pose,” Leah says. ”And a lot of it can be determined by the positioning of the eyelashes. That makes a huge difference.”

“I try to always do museum-quality work, so I do a lot of detail that people have no idea about,” Leah says. “You can shine a light inside of his nose and it’s painted all the way back to the inside of his face. I have sculpted the insides of the nose with flesh-colored resin. When I got this mount it came as a solid form, it doesn’t even have nostrils, so I cut off the whole end of the nose and I cut it into three pieces and I sculpted a completely anatomically correct septum. So it has the actual sinuses that a deer has in there. And nobody knows that I did that. But I know.”

Eric puts the deer to the test, using an iPhone flashlight app to examine its sinuses. They look pretty dang real.

“That’s why the deer is smiling smugly. This is such a good deer!” he says.

In this episode, we visit Leah Wade, the owner of San Francisco’s Quiet Science Taxidermy Studio, to learn about the art of making the dead live again … sort of. Wade specializes in museum-quality taxidermy that realistically depicts the look and behavior of animal specimens. Join us as we investigate her freezer, get up very, very close with a deer and learn about the art of making the non-living appear life-like. (This portion of the podcast is rated PG for frank discussion of death and animal dissection plus some mildly gory descriptions of animal remains.)

Public or college radio stations that would like to broadcast The Field Trip Podcast can find us at the Public Radio Exchange (PRX.org) or get in touch with us at info [at] fieldtrippodcast [dot] com.

Have ideas for what we should explore in Series 3? Please comment below!

Thanks everyone for a great second season — see you again soon.

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/06/04/the-field-trip-podcast-gets-real-with-taxidermy/feed/0In this episode, we visit Leah Wade at San Francisco's Quiet Science Taxidermy Studio to learn about the art of making the dead live again ... sort of. We also check in with Jay Kirk, the biographer of Carl Akeley,In this episode, we visit Leah Wade at San Francisco's Quiet Science Taxidermy Studio to learn about the art of making the dead live again ... sort of. We also check in with Jay Kirk, the biographer of Carl Akeley, the man who created the African Hall at New York's Museum of Natural History and transformed taxidermy from a big game trophy club to a scientific craft.Field Trip PodcastnoThe Field Trip Podcast stares into deep spacehttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/28/the-field-trip-podcast-stares-into-deep-space/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/28/the-field-trip-podcast-stares-into-deep-space/#commentsMon, 28 May 2012 07:01:52 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=667

In this episode, we learn about one of the most important — and the most emotionally charged — scientific tools at our disposal: the telescope. Telescopes have helped us learn about our place in the universe, shown us our first glimpse of what else is out there, and given us a few clues about what the ultimate fate of the universe might be.

So for today’s show, first we head to Chabot Space and Science Center in the hills of Oakland, California, to meet a group of telescope makers who are spending months — even years — grinding the mirrors for their own telescopes in order to make them completely by hand. Then we speak with planet hunter Geoff Marcy of NASA’s Kepler Mission and UC Berkeley’s astronomy department about how scientists are using a telescope in space to search for Earth-like planets that orbit other stars. What they find may tell us whether life exists elsewhere in the universe, or whether our life-friendly planet is one-of-a-kind.

You can stream the podcast, or click to download, on the player below. Run time: 24:38.

Public or college radio stations that would like to broadcast The Field Trip Podcast can find us at the Public Radio Exchange (PRX.org) or get in touch with us at info [at] fieldtrippodcast [dot] com.

A new adventure will be coming your way next Monday!

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/28/the-field-trip-podcast-stares-into-deep-space/feed/0In this episode, we learn about one of the most important -- and the most emotionally charged -- scientific tools at our disposal: the telescope. We speak with planet hunter Geoff Marcy of NASA's Kepler Mission about how scientists are using a telesco...In this episode, we learn about one of the most important -- and the most emotionally charged -- scientific tools at our disposal: the telescope. We speak with planet hunter Geoff Marcy of NASA's Kepler Mission about how scientists are using a telescope in space to search for Earth-like planets -- and maybe life -- around stars, and we meet a group of skywatchers who are building their own telescopes by hand.Field Trip PodcastnoHow to make churro tonic, a recipe for How To Do Everything fanshttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/24/how-to-make-churro-tonic-a-recipe-for-how-to-do-everything-fans/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/24/how-to-make-churro-tonic-a-recipe-for-how-to-do-everything-fans/#commentsThu, 24 May 2012 16:15:56 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=833A few weeks ago, the good folks from the How To Do Everything podcast tackled the how-to of making your own flavored gin, and on their Twitter feed, they promised this:

Well, when confronted with taco gin, there is only one thing to do: Make a churro tonic.

We came up with an improvised recipe on the spot, but it had a flaw. It used ground cinnamon, which doesn’t dissolve well in drinks, and instead becomes a sort of murky sea monster bilge on the bottom of the glass midway through the drinking experience.

So we’ve refined the recipe, incorporating the cinnamon into a sort of churro tonic syrup. Here’s how we did it.

Warning: We are not food bloggers, so food glamour shots and actual ingestability of churro tonic may be suspect (although we think it tastes sort of nice). Caveat emptor, etc.

OK, assemble these things:

You’ll need:

A half cup of brown sugar

A cup of regular water

A cinnamon stick

A half teaspoon of vanilla

Your tonic/fizzy water of choice

A lime for garnish if you are fancy

Boil the regular water, then add the half cup of brown sugar. Do not under any circumstances focus or white balance your camera for this shot. Everything should look blue and fuzzy.

Whisk the sugar until completely dissolved.

Turn the heat off and let your cinnamon stick steep until the syrup reaches desired level of cinnamoninity. This will depend on how fresh your cinnamon is and how much you like cinnamon. Give it, say, 10 minutes at least.

Remove cinnamon stick and discard. Or keep it to use as a garnish. Or, you know, whatever.

Move the syrup to a jar for cooling and add the half teaspoon of vanilla.

Put the syrup in the fridge to cool until you’re ready to use it. We have no idea how long this syrup will last in the fridge. Probably not forever.

When ready to serve, add a finger or two of the syrup to a glass of ice garnished with a slice of lime.

Readers, if you try churro tonic (or invent your own gin flavor) let us know what you think!

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/24/how-to-make-churro-tonic-a-recipe-for-how-to-do-everything-fans/feed/2The Field Trip Podcast hangs out in the garagehttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/21/the-field-trip-podcast-hangs-out-in-the-garage/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/21/the-field-trip-podcast-hangs-out-in-the-garage/#commentsMon, 21 May 2012 07:01:38 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=673

In this adventure, we head out into the crucible of American inventiveness … the garage.

Join us as we explore the backyard lab of inventor Ben Krasnow, a man whose list of garage creations includes homemade Pop Rocks, an ice cream freeze drier, a keyboard that can be played inside of an MRI machine and what we think is the first ever home-built scanning electron microscope.

Also, there is a DeLorean.

Then we talk with journalist Jack Hitt, author of the new book “Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character” about how DIY inventiveness runs in our national bloodstream, and how Americans have had a history of hacking since the era of Ben Franklin. But in an era of do-it-at-home gene splicing and synthetic biology, is it a good idea for garage enthusiasts to have such ready access to high technology, or is that something better left to the professionals?

(P.S. If you haven’t heard the Peter Pan segment from “Fiasco!,” it is one of Jack’s many hilarious contributions to This American Life, and we recommend it highly. Just, you know, listen to it after you listen to our podcast.)

You can stream the podcast, or click to download, on the player below. Run time: 20:17.

Public or college radio stations that would like to broadcast The Field Trip Podcast can find us at the Public Radio Exchange (PRX.org) or get in touch with us at info [at] fieldtrippodcast [dot] com.

A new adventure will be coming your way next Monday!

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/21/the-field-trip-podcast-hangs-out-in-the-garage/feed/0In this adventure, we head out into the crucible of American inventiveness ... the garage. We get a guided tour of the backyard lab of inventor Ben Krasnow, and then we talk with author Jack Hitt about his new book that explores the DIY roots of the Am...In this adventure, we head out into the crucible of American inventiveness ... the garage. We get a guided tour of the backyard lab of inventor Ben Krasnow, and then we talk with author Jack Hitt about his new book that explores the DIY roots of the American character.Field Trip PodcastnoThe Ritual field trip in photos: Inside the roasting processhttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/18/the-ritual-field-trip-in-photos-inside-the-roasting-process/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/18/the-ritual-field-trip-in-photos-inside-the-roasting-process/#commentsFri, 18 May 2012 21:04:13 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=777Yesterday we showed you the first set of pictures from our coffee field trip, showing you how Phil Broughton from Funranium Labs dosed us with his special highly caffeinated brew, Black Blood of the Earth. (Which, thanks to friend of the podcast Padgett, we just realized is a Big Trouble in Little China reference. *Facepalm* Well, better late than never.)

Alright, on to part two of the show. Once our heart rates had gone back to normal, we visited the production facility for Ritual Roasters in San Francisco. Ritual has been around since 2005 and they take the art of roasting very seriously. They were nice enough to let us tag along to see the process in action.

Here’s what the place looks like when you walk through the front door. To the left you can just see quality control director Ben Kaminsky at the cupping lab, roaster Joel Edwards heading towards the roaster itself, and on the right, people preparing the beans for bagging. What is all this stuff? We’ll get to that in a moment.

First, some raw materials:

These are just a few of the bags of green, or unroasted, coffee beans in the back of the shop awaiting their time over the flame. As roaster Joel Edwards pointed out to us, it actually takes coffee beans about five years to develop before they get here — they must be grown, harvested, milled and transported.

Ritual’s coffee is sourced from Central America, South America and East Africa — anywhere between the two equators, says Brandon McMahon, the company’s head of wholesale, who was our tour guide.

Here’s what the green coffee inside the bags looks like:

It actually is pretty green.

Coffee is the product of the coffee cherry, Brandon explains, and most of the content of the cherry is the seed. After the cherry is harvested, the seed is dried until its moisture content is about 10 to 13 percent. At that point, he says, it’s stable and won’t germinate, but it’s not too dried out.

What would it be like to eat green coffee? ”You would probably do some damage to your molars if you were trying to gnaw on some green coffee,” Brandon says. “It’s pretty tough, brittle stuff. I don’t think that it could actually be successfully ingested by humans.”

OK, so then on to the roasting process. Here’s the Ritual roaster itself, a 1950′s German model by Probat. Bask in its sheer industrial beauty!

We didn’t shoot too many photos of the roasting process itself, because the camera’s shutter would have made noise that would have interfered with the taping of the podcast. But the process is pretty simple to describe: The green beans went into the funnel at the top of the machine and they began to churn in the heated drum that’s right underneath the funnel. Joel, the roaster, was keeping very careful tabs at all times on the temperature inside the machine and on the beans’ progress.

Here Joel is using the trier to check on the color of the beans as they roast. It’s basically a slotted tube that slides out from inside of the machine with a sample of beans in it.

“It’s developing nicely,” he says to our producer Casey, who is standing by with the mic.

A close up of the trier and of the Probat logo. Everyone who loves old machinery, please swoon now.

Ritual takes their roasting times very seriously. They have a flat screen monitor hooked up to the Probat, which they use to chart the temperature inside the machine. We noticed that they’d even plotted out some roasting time curves out in pen on the front of the staff refrigerator.

As soon as Joel is satisfied that the beans are perfectly roasted, he opens a chute and they tumble out into a giant rotating cooling pan, which is agitated by a three-armed stirrer. The pan is perforated on the bottom, and the stirring arm makes sure the beans cool evenly.

Once cooled, the roasted beans are moved to giant buckets. But before any of this gets to you, the customer, it’s time for quality control.

Here’s the cupping lab, which is in a corner at the back of the shop. This is where quality control director Ben Kaminsky works his craft.

The small black containers each hold a sample from a roasted and ground batch of coffee. Each sample is evaluated for aroma. Then, a sample of ten and a half grams of coffee is mixed with 165 grams of hot water, and the evaluator will also judge the smell of the brewing coffee. After four minutes, the person will break the surface of the coffee that’s floating on top of the water, releasing its volatile aromatics, and then test for smell again.

After about 14 minutes, once the coffee has cooled and isn’t in danger of scalding a taster’s very sensitive tongue, they scoop the oils and grounds off the top of the coffee and begin to taste it. They’ll continue to taste it from lukewarm til it’s completely cold, says Brandon, evaluating it along the way.

Like wine tasters, coffee tasters spit out what they’re tasting into a bucket. “It’s a lot of coffee to ingest and you can sort of see the crazy eyes if anyone decides to not spit the coffee,” Brandon says.

Tasting is done using a special cupping spoon. This one, with its deep bowl, was designed just for Ritual.

There’s a coffee tasting tradition of doing a loud slurp off the spoon. Ben finds it obnoxious (listen to the podcast to hear Ben’s quiet version of the slurp and Brandon’s attempt at a really noisy one) but he says it has a scientific purpose: it sprays coffee particles throughout the surface of your mouth and throat, so that it reaches all of your taste buds. It also cools the coffee, he says, bringing it closer to the body’s own temperature, which allows you to taste it more thoroughly. At a neutral temperature, he says, “You’re not tasting heat.”

Batches of beans that pass muster at the cupping lab eventually move on to the bagging station.

The big machine at the right with the funnel on top dispenses the right amount of coffee into each of the red Ritual bags.

Then the bags are packed up for shipping or distribution to local cafes and stores.

As for the Ritual crew? Their day starts very early, so by the the early afternoon the roasting process is winding down, and it’s Miller time.

Actually, it’s espresso time. Ben was nice enough to brew us a shot or two.

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/18/the-ritual-field-trip-in-photos-inside-the-roasting-process/feed/0Black Blood of the Earth: The taste test in photoshttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/17/black-blood-of-the-earth-the-taste-test-in-photos/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/17/black-blood-of-the-earth-the-taste-test-in-photos/#commentsThu, 17 May 2012 18:37:03 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=730On our first adventure for the new season of the Field Trip, we took our lives into our own hands by investigating the awesome power of extreme caffeine.

We’d heard tell of the legend of Phil Broughton, the brains behind Funranium Labs, an Oakland-based company that makes extreme coffee via a special cold-brewing vacuum extraction process. He is the inventor of Black Blood of the Earth, which he says is roughly 40 times more caffeinated than normal human coffee.

For your safety, Phil recommends that you drink no more than 75 milliliters of Black Blood a day. Well, we’re not all that interested in safety, so we asked Phil to come on over and dose us with his best brews.

Phil very kindly agreed to give us a two-hour tasting session of several of his Black Blood varietals, during which we would each drink the equivalent of 2 liters, or 10 cups, of ordinary hot-brewed drip coffee. In the interest of Science, we borrowed a little equipment so we could monitor our biometrics/give the paramedics our most recent blood pressure update.

First step: Synchronizing our heart monitors. Eric’s base heart rate is a reptilian 55 or so beats per minute. Kara’s is a more mammalian 66-ish. We wore the kind that have a strap you wear around your chest, with a readout that you wear on your wrist. (Thanks to friend of the podcast Mary for the loan of heart monitor #2!)

OK, Wonder Twin powers, activate!

Enter Phil!

Phil met us in an office that had been donated to us for the sake of Science by a very friendly UC Berkeley faculty member. (We were worried about spilling Black Blood into the console at the Field Trip HQ/underground lair, plus this nice office has more chairs.)

Here Phil is carrying a 750 ML bottle of Black Blood of the Earth, Kona version. It contains this warning on the side: DRINK WITH CAUTION … HIGH CAFFEINE CONTENT! (Also note: erupting volcano on label.)

Bottle: terrifying!

Phil’s t-shirt: mildly alarming, considering what we were about to ingest!

Eric and Kara had both abstained from drinking their normal cup or two of coffee a day. Once Phil set out this rack, Eric could not wait to DRINK SOME DANG COFFEE.

Kara had other things on her mind: “I have four worries. One, heart explosion. Two, never sleeping again. Three, brain explosion, and four, rampant barfing, for which I apologize in advance.”

Now it was time to begin the tasting. Here’s Phil measuring out a sample, 25 milliliters each — note use of actual lab beakers. Phil is serious about dosage limits.

Also note, hiding in the back corner, the portable cooler that Phil uses to transport his samples. He’s also serious about keeping it cool — you can hear more in the show about why cold preserves the flavor of coffee.

Here’s what a serving of Black Blood looks like when you actually put it in a glass and drink it, as Phil says, “straight and cold.” Turns out, 25 milliliters is pretty small. That’s one of the reasons why Phil urged us to taste it both cold and hot, using a 3-to-1 dilution rate for hot water to cold coffee. That way, he says, he can make a glass last long enough to get through checking his morning email.

We kept checking our heart rates throughout the tasting process. At one point, Kara’s was up to 103. Eric’s … fell. (See, reptilian, right?) And the more we drank, the more they fell, for both of us. We both found drinking Black Blood to be remarkably calming and focusing, although at one point Kara became strangely aware of her arms (“Omigod! I have arms!”) and felt some muscle tension set in.

We also checked our blood pressure rates thanks to a blood pressure cuff loan from friend of the podcast Mark. (Thanks, Mark!) For timing reasons, we ended up having to cut the blood pressure bits from the final version of the podcast, but the results were the same as the heart rate monitors — a mild spike at the beginning, and then calming down to normal.

Here’s us midway through the process, with Eric checking his blood pressure and producer Casey with the mic.

Here’s Eric at the end of the experiment with a few of our empties. The Field Trip crew was feeling pretty dang happy by the end of those two hours.

And as for side effects of caffeine over-consumption, like jitteriness, tinnitus and wakefulness? We didn’t notice any. In fact, Eric reports that he was asleep by 8 pm.

What happened to that giant bottle of Black Blood, you ask?

It’s what’s for breakfast. Here’s the very last of that bottle at Kara’s house this morning. She drinks it cold with almond milk. (Sorry about the lighting, she apparently lives next to some kind of supernova in progress.)

For pictures from part two of our coffee field trip, in which we visited Ritual Roasters in San Francisco to see how they roast the perfect bean, tune back in tomorrow. And to hear the podcast, just click here.

In this episode, we investigate the awesome power of caffeine in an attempt to learn what it is about coffee that we love so much, and what happens when you drink way too much of it.

We start our amateur experiment in coffee science by meeting up with Phil Broughton, Herr Direktor of Funranium Labs, the Oakland-based company behind Black Blood of the Earth, the most extreme coffee on the planet. Phil estimates that Black Blood, a highly concentrated form of cold brewed coffee, is a whopping 40 times more caffeinated than your average cup of Joe, and suggests that for your safety, you ingest no more than 100 milliliters per day.

We’re not that interested in safety, so we told Phil to bring a batch of his finest brews over and get ready to dose us.

You’ll just have to listen to see how that went.

Then we headed off to Ritual Roasters in San Francisco, where we learned about everything that happens to the bean before Phil and other less extreme home brewers get to it, including the science behind their very carefully regulated roasting process and the dramatic taste test it must pass before it’s sent your way.

You can stream the podcast, or click to download, on the player below. Run time: 26:15.

Public or college radio stations that would like to broadcast The Field Trip Podcast can find us at the Public Radio Exchange (PRX.org) or get in touch with us at info [at] fieldtrippodcast [dot] com.

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/05/14/the-field-trip-podcast-drinks-way-too-much-coffee/feed/0In this episode, we investigate the awesome power of caffeine by letting the head of Funranium Labs dose us with Black Blood of the Earth, the most extreme coffee on the planet. Then we head to Ritual Roasters to learn about the science behind roasting...In this episode, we investigate the awesome power of caffeine by letting the head of Funranium Labs dose us with Black Blood of the Earth, the most extreme coffee on the planet. Then we head to Ritual Roasters to learn about the science behind roasting the perfect bean.Field Trip PodcastnoNew series of The Field Trip Podcast arrives May 14!http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/04/30/new-series-of-the-field-trip-podcast-arrives-may-14/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/04/30/new-series-of-the-field-trip-podcast-arrives-may-14/#commentsMon, 30 Apr 2012 16:48:38 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=628It’s official … we’re back in T minus 14 days! Please put a big red heart on your calendar around May 14, when we’ll start rolling out Series 2, and then look for a new episode every Monday.

Not to give too much away, but this season’s adventures will involve a somewhat terrifying version of a beloved breakfast beverage, the mysteries of extrasolar exploration, the hair-raising contents of one particular freezer, and (for real) a DeLorean. You can listen to a little teaser of what’s in store by clicking on the sound file at the end of this page.

If you’re a friend of the podcast, will you help us get the words out to your nerdly friends and neighbors? Let them know that they can listen or download for free here on FieldTripPodcast.com and subscribe (also for free) on iTunes and on SoundCloud. The podcast will also be available through the Public Radio Exchange for any radio stations interested in broadcasting it.

We’re super excited for Series #2 (and very happy to have survived taping it) so please help us tell the world. See you back here in two weeks!

– The Field Trippers

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/04/30/new-series-of-the-field-trip-podcast-arrives-may-14/feed/0It's official ... we're back in T minus 14 days! Please put a big red heart on your calendar around May 14, when we'll start rolling out Series 2, and then look for a new episode every Monday.It's official ... we're back in T minus 14 days! Please put a big red heart on your calendar around May 14, when we'll start rolling out Series 2, and then look for a new episode every Monday.Field Trip PodcastnoLike science podcasts? Join the club on SoundCloud!http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/04/25/like-science-podcasts-join-the-club-on-soundcloud/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/04/25/like-science-podcasts-join-the-club-on-soundcloud/#commentsWed, 25 Apr 2012 16:00:15 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=618If you like science podcasts and are looking for a way to sample some new options for free, without having to download them or sign up for a subscription, check out the group we set up on SoundCloud for our fellow podcasting nerds! This is a place for radio stations or podcasters to share sound files that have to with science, technology, medicine or the environment. If you’re a listener, it’s free to join. If you’re an audio producer, you get a small amount of storage space for free, and then pay if you want more. So far several other science-y news organizations have joined us in making their stories available through the group, including the Oakland-based Making Contact public affairs program, Portland’s EarthFix environmental program, I Wonder … an excellent science podcast from Pittsburgh, the Getting Better Acquainted interview series from London, and Pulse of the Planet, a program from the Hudson Valley in New York that invites listeners to share the sounds of the natural world.

SoundCloud is a service that allows musicians, radio stations, independent audio producers and anyone else who makes original noises to upload their work to share. (Each contributor can decide whether they’d like to make their tracks listen-only for streaming, or available for download.) It has a social media component, meaning that users create a profile and then can subscribe to favorite streams, join groups (like our science podcast group), comment on tracks, “favorite” the ones they like and recommend them to their friends. Each sound clip is shown not as a simple progress bar (like you see on iTunes) but rather as a visible representation of the actual audio track — the same squiggly sound waves we see when we edit these pieces in the studio. Not only is it kind of cool to see what the music looks like, but the commenting feature allows you to insert your comment at the point on the track you’d like to talk about. So for example, if a musician drops an awesome beat, or a podcaster tells a groan-worthy joke, you can post your message right at that point on the track.

Although SoundCloud originally started as a place for musicians, record labels and remixers to share their original works, it’s becoming a great platform for news and talk programs as well. A few of the radio or podcasts programs we like that are regularly posting to SoundCloud are Roman Mars’ 99 Percent Invisible podcast about design and architecture, Public Radio International’s global affairs program The World, and Glynn Washington’s storytelling program Snap Judgment.

As much as we like iTunes, we love the idea of having a second free platform where podcasters can share their work. For new, small programs like ours, the social media component allows old friends to share our tracks with their social group, which helps new people find us more easily. (iTunes, because it’s so vast and runs via a secret algorithm, is harder to navigate when you’re not looking for anything in particular. The star-based ratings system certainly helps you find which podcasts are generally well regarded, but you don’t know WHO is recommending them and whether they share your tastes. When something’s recommended by your friend, at least you have an idea of how respectable their opinions are.)

In any case, we think it’s a promising platform for new, emerging and independent audio producers. Have you tried SoundCloud? Let us know what you think!

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/04/25/like-science-podcasts-join-the-club-on-soundcloud/feed/0… and it’s back to the lab again!http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/04/24/and-its-back-to-the-lab-again/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/04/24/and-its-back-to-the-lab-again/#commentsTue, 24 Apr 2012 17:52:26 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=616Hi Field Trip friends, just a little note to let you know what we’ve been working on. It’s definitely been a little quiet around here lately on the site, but there’s been a lot going on behind the scenes. We’ve been out reporting Series 2 of the podcast, meeting some of our strangest, funniest, most adventurous and most profound interviewees yet. We want to tell you all about it but we are trying VERY HARD not to give too much away. We are clapping our hands over our mouths and jumping up and down as we speak. Discretion is not our strong suit.

Now we’re back in the studio feverishly finishing up our scripts and editing our audio together for a Series 2 launch that’s just a few weeks away! Look for a little treat/sneak peek on the site on April 30 and for Series 2 to start rolling soon after that.

OK, it’s been nice to be out here breathing the fresh air, but we’re locking ourselves back in the lab now. We’ll see you here again on April 30 for a little surprise and then very soon after that for the whole shebang. In the meantime, we leave you with this thought: COFFEE IS A SPECTACULARLY GOOD IDEA.

Until just a few days before I arrived, the San Francisco Zoo had been the proud home of a committed, monogamous pair of male penguins named Harry and Pepper. They’d moved in to a burrow together a year or so before, and incubated and fussed over first a wooden egg, then a real one. All was well.

But recently, penguin keepers had noticed Harry gathering a great deal of nesting material. He was building one nest in his burrow with Pepper… and another one across the way, with a female penguin named Linda. As zookeeper Anthony Brown put it, “there were several weeks when he was, uh, servicing both burrows.” Before long, Harry and Linda were exclusively burrowed up together, leaving Pepper all alone.

I hadn’t come to the zoo to get to the bottom of whether the penguins were, or had been, “gay.” I’d come because of the response to their breakup. Harry’s departure from Pepper’s burrow quite literally sparked an international outcry. Spanish television covered it. The BBC couldn’t get enough. The New York Times, LA Times, and People magazine all ran pieces; there were stories in the Canadian, Chinese, Indian, French, and Australian press. Emails and letters poured in, including at least one postcard addressed directly to jilted Pepper. Advocates opined from both sides of the same-sex marriage debate. Linda was branded a homewrecker. The story took on the dimensions of a zoological telenovela.

All of this somewhat mystified the animal keepers, who pointed out – while tossing buckets of fish to their eager charges – that penguin pairs form and dissolve all the time. This particular situation had certainly raised some eyebrows, but it was hardly a comment on the penguins’ fundamental nature. “If Pepper, for the rest of his penguin life, only ever pairs with male penguins, I might be more comfortable saying that,” said Brown. “But I can’t ask him whether he finds a girl penguin attractive or not.”

Listen to the radio piece I did for KALW’s Crosscurrents here (includes dramatic cuts from Spanish TV). And if you’re looking to, uh, fish around more deeply in this topic, I suggest Jon Mooallem’s excellent article on our tendency to anthropormorphize animals’ sex lives.

Update: SF Zoo’s Anthony Brown advises me that as of this posting, Harry and Linda are still happily cohabiting, while Pepper has taken up with a female penguin named Scout. However, he says, so far they’ve only enjoyed each others’ company “off-season” – unclear what will happen when breeding season rolls around in a few months.

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/01/13/caseys-favorite-field-trip-penguin-scandal-at-the-san-francisco-zoo/feed/0Kara’s favorite field trip: Ghost huntinghttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/01/11/karas-favorite-field-trip-ghost-hunting/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/01/11/karas-favorite-field-trip-ghost-hunting/#commentsWed, 11 Jan 2012 18:11:30 +0000karahttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=572[Hi there. So while we're off dreaming up new places to go, we thought we'd take this week to share a few of our favorite field trips from the past. Today: Kara and the search for the paranormal. And we'd love to hear from you -- what's your favorite field trip?]

So we were in the women’s bathroom on a World War II naval carrier, looking for ghosts, and for a minute there it looked like we had one cornered.

The two psychics in the ghost-hunting group had said they’d sensed the presence of a young sailor near one side of the room. The reading on the TriField meter — a gadget that measures electromagnetic fields, which ghost-hunters use to spot unexplained energy sources — was high when they waved it in the direction of the ghostly sailor, and low when they pointed it away. And when I’d asked, from my spot near the sinks where I was furiously scribbling things into a notebook, the ghost hunters had said they weren’t too worried about the prospect of a spirit haunting, of all places, the bathroom. Back in the day, they explained, when the USS Hornet had been a giant fortress at sea, housing thousands of souls, this spot had been part of the ship’s engine room. If a few of those souls had returned to their old stamping grounds in the afterlife, why not visit here?

But there was a problem. The spirit appeared to be hanging around pretty close to a fuse box bolted to the wall. That could be what was making the needle spike on the meter.

To lure the ghost into the clear for a better reading, one of the psychics had suggested that the other put on some lipstick in front of the mirror and see if the spirit would follow her over to the sink. The former sailors, she said, liked to watch women put on make up. Actually, this is how she put it: “They may be dead, but they haven’t forgotten.”

Readers, I nearly died with glee and took up haunting the ladies’ room myself. Regardless of where you fall on the Mulder-to-Scully spectrum, this was some pure reporting fun.

I was along for the ghost-hunting trip because I was working on profile of Loyd Auerbach, the group’s friendly, bearded leader. He runs the Office of Paranormal Investigations here in the Bay Area, where he goes by the rather endearing nickname “Professor Paranormal.” Auerbach is an amazingly fun guy to hang around; he’s smart, funny and he’s not too tightly wound about whether or not you think ghost hunting is total bunk, even though it’s something he’s studied intently for his whole life — he’s got an advanced degree in parapsychology and his house is full of the latest in ghost-hunting gadgets. (At the time I was writing the story, he had a sideline in something called “Professor Paranormal’s Psychic Mind Theater” that involved sleight-of-hand tricks and hosting seances. Skeptics, he figured, can roll with a sense of humor; only the true believers get freaked out if you aren’t serious all of the time. He’s now got a new sideline in confectionery: It’s called Haunted by Chocolate.)

But the real magic, I thought as I followed him around, is that he had managed to make the study of the ephemeral into a full-time job, as sort of an ambassadorship from the spirit world to the living plane, or more specifically, to the media arm of the living plane. He’s had an incredible career of writing books, appearing on talk shows and science programs, and teaching classes in addition to running his small ghost-hunting crew. (When we published the story in the East Bay Express, my newspaper alma mater, in 2003, this was our headline: “Talking Head for the Undead.” It’s pretty much my masterwork of headlining, except for maybe my profile of an anti-rodeo activist which we called “Eric Mills and the Horse He Rode In On.”)

Auerbach let me sit in on his classes, hang out with his ghost-hunting group a bit, and read up on some of his favorite case files. Even though he is the head of a group that investigates things that go bump in the night, Auerbach is pretty tough on claims of paranormal activity, and a lot of what he talked about in his classes and books is how NOT to spot a ghost. Much of the bumping people are so worried about turns out to be courtesy of squirrels. He has some withering things to say about “spirit orbs” and lens flare. Etc.

But he also had some really fun stories about his various ghost-hunting adventures. There was the story of the “sexorcist,” or the phantom couple in New York who would wake up the inhabitants of their former apartment with loud sex noises every night at 3 am. There was the Blue Lady in Half Moon Bay who reportedly haunts a restaurant and spanks the staff with kitchen tools. And there was my favorite, Dacron Bob, the depressed ghost who is said to have spent his afterlife hanging around the rolls of fabric at a Concord design company. Not to mention, there are many stories of Auerbach’s somewhat unorthodox past ghost-busting methods. (Knock-knock jokes are involved. Also: rap music.)

Most of our conversations weren’t about ghost stories, though. They were about the bigger questions raised by a life of studying the paranormal. What is consciousness? Does it require a body, and does it end when you die? Is there really any reliable, scientific method-friendly way to study the mind or the human experience, regardless of whether your subjects are living or dead? As Auerbach told me, ”The physical laws of the universe don’t apply to human behavior. If somebody says parapsychology is not a science, then okay, fine, psychology is not a science either, and neither is anthropology and neither is sociology.”

And most of all, we talked about what ghosts — if they exist — might actually be. Are they figments that live purely in the viewer’s imagination, some kind of expression of grief in the mind of the recently bereaved? Are they fragments of the departed’s consciousness, a post-bodily projection that is managing to transmit itself from one mind to another? And more to to the point: Are they the kind of thing you can find in the ladies’ room of your local naval carrier?

So that is why Auerbauch and I were standing next to the sinks, trying to see if two of his colleagues could use a tube of peach-colored lip gloss to make contact with the other side. If the strange energy could be lured away from the wall, with its meter-confusing fusebox, and across the room with the promise of some post-life peeping, well, maybe we would be on to something.

There was a long silence as one of the psychics bent over the sink and applied the lip gloss. The other one waved the TriField meter behind her back.

Zero.

The ghost, if there had ever been one, had evaporated.

The first psychic put the lip gloss away. The second one mused for a while, trying to figure out what had happened.

]]>http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/01/11/karas-favorite-field-trip-ghost-hunting/feed/2Eric’s favorite field trip: Elk buglinghttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/01/09/erics-favorite-field-trip-elk-bugling/
http://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/2012/01/09/erics-favorite-field-trip-elk-bugling/#commentsMon, 09 Jan 2012 17:54:13 +0000Eric Simonshttp://www.fieldtrippodcast.com/?p=567[Hi there. So while we're off dreaming up new places to go, we thought we'd take this week to share a few of our favorite field trips from the past. Today: Eric and the secret magic of elk bugling. And we'd love to hear from you -- what's your favorite field trip?]

Sometimes you’re tootling along on your way to some great and wonderful adventure and the road opens before you and (to quote the poet Browning) the lark is on the wing and the snail’s on the thorn and you think, not so badly done, life. Not bad at all.

Like the time – this is my honorable mention for favoritist field trip – I went scuba diving in the kelp forest tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium for a story for the Los Angeles Times. I was writing about the aquarium’s fabulous team of paraplegic tank-cleaners, and somehow convinced them that to really feel the scene I needed to be inside the tank. I remember hovering there during the feeding show, amidst the seething swirl of piscinity, looking out at 30 or 40 people looking back at me, and thinking (as appears to be my wont), “FIIIIIIIIISH!”

Also – a runner-up field trip – I wrote this book about Charles Darwin that was basically a three-month field trip to South America, and loved almost every minute of it, but most especially the time when my friend and I drove way out into the Atacama Desert in search of a hacienda where Darwin once spent the night. There was a time when the entire thing seemed a horrible mistake – specifically, as I backed our rental car down the one-lane lip of a flaming canyon ridge with our wheels hanging over the precipice and a Chilean mining truck all up in our grill. But in the end the day was magic, and provided the book’s title (Darwin Slept Here), and I can’t help think of it quite fondly even if my travel buddy still hasn’t washed the panic-sweat stains out of his T-shirt. (At one point, I remember him saying something like, “I can’t hold the map anymore, my palms are too sweaty.” He was sitting on the cliff-edge side of the car.)

But really, in my field trip who’s who, one journey must stand alone: the 2005 World Championships of Elk Bugling. Elk bugling is, basically, making sounds like an elk so that the curious elk wanders over to you and you can shoot it. In competition, the contestants make their noises on a small stage while a panel of expert judges – mustache-and-cammo mountain men and elk guides from Wyoming, Montana, and Oregon – sit behind a screen and take notes. These elk callers, I should add, they get into it. It is a sensual performance; they are wooing the elk. You know the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet? Picture that scene, except performed by one person racing back and forth to play both parts and set to the dulcet tunes of a pneumatic drill and a rusty gate hinge.

Anyway, I was writing about the two-time reigning champion of the peewee division, in his final year of eligibility for peewees. Would he three-peat as champion elk caller? Would his passionate father/coach rush the stage? The tension was unbelievable. There were timekeeper errors, tears, and ultimately, triumph. At the end, as we sat in the bleachers and the champ heard his name called, a bystander leaned forward to the beaming father and said, “Your son has a natural talent for being an elk.”

We’re back from our holiday break, we have wiped the sleep out of our eyes and gotten the crumbs out of our hair, and we’re back to work on Series 2. That’ll be on its way to you in early spring — more details coming soon, but we promise to make the second series bigger, badder and field trippier than ever.

In the meantime, stay tuned here for some more stories from us. Over the next week, Eric, Casey and I are going to share some stories about our favorite field trips that we’ve taken for some other reporting gigs. We’ve been to some really weird places in the name of science, so we’re all having a hard time narrowing it down to our best trips of all, but whatever we pick, the stories should be … strange. (I personally think it’s always a sign of a promising reporting excursion if they make you wear a hair net. Safety goggles are pretty exciting, too, but when you get into hair net territory you know it’s about to get insanely messy or insanely clean. Either way, it’s some serious science.)

And in very exciting news for us, we just noticed that The Field Trip Podcast made it into the “new and notable” list for iTunes science podcasts. (That screencap up there is how the front of the iTunes science section looked Wednesday night. Look, we’re next to the BBC and NASA!) Thanks to everyone who has rated or reviewed us on iTunes. If you haven’t yet, we hope you’ll stop by and share your thoughts — your reviews will help get the word out to fans of affable science nerdery worldwide. You can check it out (and subscribe free) on iTunes here.

We’re also very excited to have been featured twice on the Mother Jones website. They shared our Ocean and Fermentation episodes on their Blue Marble science blog — thanks MoJo friends for the kind write-ups!

And finally, if you’d like to share a picture of how you listen to the podcast, please pass it along to info [at] fieldtrippodcast [dot] com. We’d love to see how you field trip, and whether or not it involves a hair net.

Thanks to everyone for a wonderful launch in 2011, and here’s to 2012!

I wish I had some pictures of the outside of the shop to show you how cute the storefront is, but we had the tape rolling and didn’t want to pick up any shutter noise. So instead, here’s the first thing we we saw when we came through the door — 750 pounds of cabbage being put through the industrial shredder.

It was sauerkraut day … or as shop owner Alex Hozven referred to it, “Monday.”

I’m telling you, it was a lot of cabbage. In the background, you can see what most of the shop looks like — it’s one big kitchen filled with large tables where workers are busy chopping up vegetables, prepping jars, and then stuffing them with the finished product. But more about that in a minute.

After the cabbage for the sauerkraut is shredded, it’s salted and packed into large clear plastic tubs, where it begins the first stage in the fermentation process, as the salt draws the liquid out of the vegetables and begins to form a brine.

Note: no heat, no vinegar, and no “secret microbe mix.” The probiotic microbes like Lactobacillus that will cause the vegetables to become increasingly soft and sour are already riding along invisibly on the veggies — no need to add anything.

Next stop: The Cave. This is a small refrigerated room where the rest of the fermentation happens. The veggies are encased in steel tanks that were originally intended for wine-making. This ensures that the conditions in the tanks stay anaerobic, which keeps out unwanted microbial growth and makes sure the food is fermenting, not rotting. Each is topped with a pressure gauge that lets out some of the carbon dioxide build up that is going on belowdecks.

The process can be oozy! The pickling food tends to burble up as it ferments, producing some colorful juices like on this tank, and the escaping carbon dioxide makes a low mumbling noise that Alex calls “talking.”

Everything stays in the cave until Alex and her staff feel it’s ready for consumption. It could be days, weeks, months or more. During this time, Alex says, the microbes are essentially “pre-digesting” the food, making it softer and giving it that sour taste we love so much in pickled foods.

Once Alex decides it’s ready, the tank is taken out of the cave and opened up. Here’s a big tub of a Cultured Pickle speciality called “sea slaw” just before packing: cabbage, seaweed, golden beets, ginger and the ever-mysterious burdock root.

Trust us, this is delicious.

Here’s Alex’s husband Kevin Farley packing the sea slaw into jars.

He’s making a delightfully squishy sound as he does this. The trick, he says, is to pack as much as you possibly can into the jar to preserve the anaerobic conditions inside of it as it sits in your refrigerator.

Then the tops are screwed on the jars and they’re ready to go into refrigeration and then on to you. All of the pickles, Alex points out, are still living cultures, even once they are outside of the cave, so the microbes are still at work. The pickled foods will continue to change in flavor and texture once you take them home and put them in your fridge.

Here’s Alex with the finished product … or as finished as a live culture ever gets.

Right next to the cave, there’s this mad scientist shelf full of giant aguas frescas jars filled with different colored fluids and this mysterious white mass floating at the top of each. That’s the kombucha “mother,” a mass of bacteria and yeasts that are feeding off of the sugary tea that forms the basis of the kombucha.

Alex has a whole wall of flavors going at any given time. On the day we visited, she was making a kombucha based on turmeric root (that’s the yellow one on the left), one based on parsley (the white one in the middle), and one using thyme (on the right — you can just see a big handful of thyme at the top of the jar.) Some of the other flavors she had going at that time included green tea, and the strawberry oregano one we sampled.

Mad, tasty science!

Alex let us taste a few of the flavors she was working on, and we stopped shoving them into our mouths juuuuuuust long enough to snap this photo. On the left, a taste of the strawberry oregano kombucha, which is essentially summer in a glass. On the right, a turmeric-flavored pickle. We had to cut our reactions to this one from the show, partly because we were running short on time, and partly because the sound of us drooling did not make for great audio.

And here are those purple pickles we couldn’t stop giggling about. They really were the best! They are this beautiful rich plum color on the outside, and have rings that are a sort of salmon pink and orange on the inside. And they are surprisingly fizzy, for carrots.

Here’s what the kombucha looks like when it’s bottled and ready for the grocery store. Just remember, open sloooooooowly. I tried this at home, opened it too fast, and ended up having to lick most of it off my hands. Still good!

Can you dig that subtitle? "Naturally fermented vegetable soda!"

Want a peek in the cold case at some of the other treats Cultured Pickle makes? Here’s just one shelf: from left to right there’s carrots and rutabagas with mustard seed, beets and daikon, radish and leek with caraway and peppercorn, golden spring roots and flowers, and mustard greens.

A whole shelf just for kim chee! From left to right, those are basic kim chee (a traditional Korean pickle made primarily from cabbage), then celery and sunchoke, watermelon rind, burdock and mustard green, and I think the one on the right is green onion.

You thought we were joking about Alex’s “Little Ode to Bacteria?” Nope, here it is — an up close shot of the billions of tiny workers that make fermentation possible. Microbes, we salute you!

Would you like to visit Cultured Pickle Shop? You can find them on the web here, or drop by their storefront at 800 Bancroft Way, Suite 105 in Berkeley, California. Their pickle selection is always changing because they work with what’s seasonally available, so while you may not find the exact same treats we sampled here, you are sure to find something new and delicious.